Scientists Examined Iron Age Skulls And Confirmed A Gruesome Ritual Of The Ancient Gauls

It’s November 2018, and researchers at the Paul Valéry University in the southern French city of Montpellier are analyzing a number of skulls. They were excavated at the nearby Iron Age site at Le Cailar, where the Gauls once lived. And marks on the skulls bring grim news. They suggest something horrifying was done to them after the death of their owners.

The researchers want to learn more about the Gauls. These were a collection of different Celtic tribes who occupied much of France and nearby territories in Europe for about a thousand years from the 5th century B.C. As with many ancient people, they left no written records. And what we know about them tends to come from the accounts of outsiders.

Much of what we know about the Gauls comes from Greek and Roman historians. And the Roman descriptions of them may not be necessarily balanced. Indeed, they were in frequent and bloody conflict with them.